Champaign Mural Salutes Marijuana Chef

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 09:58:04 CSTBy: AP

A University of Illinois student and artist plans to memorialize one of Urbana-Champaign's more colorful characters with a mural. Langston Allston plans to paint a mural of the late marijuana-cooking columnist Chef Ra on a wall outside Champaign pub Mike and Molly's. Chef Ra's real name was James Wilson Junior. He wrote about cooking with marijuana for High Times magazine until his death in 2006. He was also a local radio host and a regular at parties and other gatherings in the college towns around the U of I campus. The owners of the bar say the plan to foot the roughly $2,500 cost. But Allston hopes to raise some money to help. Allston hopes to finish the spray-paint mural by mid-April.